Friday, March 16, 2012

Vintage Merchandise: It's Greek to Everybody

This must be one of the weirder merchandise illustrations I've seen in a while... but somehow it still has a cool vibe to it. Up for sale on Ebay (directly from Greece) is this Greek edition of an Inspector Gadget board game that was released in the 80s. They get a lot of strange touches into this cover drawing: All of Gadget's clothing has the wrong colors (except for the pants), Penny's eyes look REALLY freaky (and dead)... and then you have M.A.D. Cat, who's actually integrated into the Greek Inspector Gadget logo, from which he pops out and grins at our heroes like the Chechire Cat from "Alice in Wonderland". (Is M.A.D. Cat a fan, I wonder?) Gadget even points at him with a playful smile... now what the heck is THAT supposed to mean? Of course, he probably doesn't know that M.A.D. Cat belongs to Dr. Claw, but I almost get the feeling that he's saying: "You rascal, you... sitting on top of my logo like that!"

It's hard to explain why I kinda like this drawing, but then again, a lot of stuff in this world is hard to explain...

4 comments:

Yeah, that is actually possible to read into it... crazy, isn't it? What were the Greek THINKING?!? ;)

(On the other hand, I kinda get the feeling that Gadget acts friendly towards M.AD. Cat thinking it's just an ordinary, playful cat... while Brain looks at Gadget disapprovingly because he knows whose cat it REALLY is.)

Sure! I assume you're talking about season 2, right? There hasn't been too many official releases of those episodes yet, which is probably why old VHS and television rips are all you'll find online at the moment (unless you have access to official streaming video services such as Netflix and Amazon Instant Video). But if you just wanna watch the episodes, I can recommend this channel on a Romanian streaming site: http://www.peteava.ro/canal-160. Press "Sezonul 2", and you'll find almost all episodes from season 2 in generally decent quality. (The only things missing are three safety tips from the episodes Gadget's Gadgets, Gadget and Old Lace and Gadget and the Red Rose; as well as the entire episode Gadget Meeets the Grappler.) Beware of The Incredible Shrinking Gadget, by the way: In addition to Capeman, this verson of the ep has really bad sound!

When it comes to the Gadgetinis episodes I recommended, it seems that at least some of them are up on Youtube... http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gadgetinis

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About Me

I am, among much else, a huge fan of the original Inspector Gadget (particularly Season 1 from 1983). This blog was created to share that fandom and love. I also frequently post Inspector Gadget-related videos on my YouTube channel.

Disclaimer

I do not own Inspector Gadget or any of its related characters, stories, music etc. The Inspector was created at D.i.C. Enterprises by Andy Heyward, Jean Chalopin and Bruno Bianchi; and is currently employed at DHX Media.